"Busy triage, decent labour ward with room for..."

I found the service to be good on the whole - although there were some issues with communication and capacity. When I arrived in intense labour pains, no one answered the buzzer at maternity and I got picked up by some student nurses and taken to reception. I got the last bed in triage, which was overrun. It took an hour to be transferred to labour ward and when I left, there were lots of women waiting in the corridor. Once on the labour ward, my care was generally good - I requested an epidural and was given one within 20 mins, and received excellent one to one midwife care. However, my baby's heartbeat kept dipping, and the consultant decided to prep for instrumental delivery. The communication during this period could have been clearer - I felt that I had to ask a lot of probing questions to be explained what was going on, and I am still not 100% sure what tipped the balance for the intervention to happen. I also didn't appreciate the number of other people coming into the room without introducing themselves - i was in stirrups and someone came in to ask about keys!? We opted for a private postnatal room, which would have been much much better if there had been a reclining chair or something else for dad to stay the night - it really wouldn't have been feasible for him to stay more than one night. Discharge took a long time with poor communication throughout. So overall I was happy with my birth but there are things that can be improved relatively easily.